In the Underground
by CampionSayn
Summary: The Riddler is fully aware that the woman is actually vaguely intelligent, but her voice isn't helping to cement that knowledge. If anything, it makes the acknowledgement unbelievable. Short and sweet one-shot, not romantic between Harley and Edward.


Title: In the Underground.  
>Summary: The Riddler is fully aware that the woman is actually vaguely intelligent, but her voice isn't helping to cement knowledge. If anything, it makes the acknowledgement unbelievable. Short and sweet one-shot, not romantic between Harley and Edward.<br>Disclaimer: I don't own the franchise, characters, copyrights or anything of the like for The Batman series.  
>Warning: Might come off as OOC, seeing as I've only seen seasons one and two of the whole series and little bits and pieces on YouTube.<p>

Well, here I am. I didn't think I'd ever willingly come to plant something in this section, but I got sucked down a vortex of YouTube vids and can't stop thinking of the characters in THE Batman series. Especially Eddie; they made him super angsty and kinda cute sans the makeup. Harley's a bit…not as smart as in B: TAS (how that's possible, I don't even know), but at least we saw her wearing pants in her first episode [though it's still hard to get over how stupid she and her voice is]. Ragdoll….there are no words—SOMEONE HOOK HIM AND SELINA UP THIS INSTANT! ...okay, _some_ words. Also: Joker and Penguin are _**CREEPY**_. Ivy is a BABY. Selina looks more like a bat than Batman (even though it's cute). Rojas is even more worthless than Harvey Bullock if one can believe that.

PS: I know it may seem as though I'm bashing Harley, but I'm not. In general DCAU, she's my favorite character (with Jervis and Jonathan tied at second), it's just hard to get her right in _this_ series. Her self-serving attitude in the first episode she featured in ticked me off. Eddie, on the other hand…he might be a little more deep and dark than he's really been before. I mean LOOK at him.

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><p><em>-:-<br>_We're all pathetic. It's what makes everything interesting_.  
>-House, MD.<em>

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><p>An infection of minor poison as given by an especially angry stray cat, skin swelling up all around the small puncture where it had bitten down between thumb and pointer finger, three lines of red with yellow tint at the edges as if the swollen flesh is a piece of yellow and burnt paper.<p>

Edward Nygma kept his right hand close up against his chest with it bound in a piece of the torn clothing of his Arkham jumpsuit. He kept repeating over and over again under his breath, "Stupid, stupid, dumb. Stupid, stupid, dumb…"

Screams and wails of that of some underworld monster coming to life and into their world after hatching from a scorching hot egg. The sounds of the police sirens outside the labyrinth of twenty-two foot bushes and hedges was but an echo of what is used to be by now, far and far on the other side of the twenty square mile park the Riddler had run into, but Edward still didn't want to take his chances and kept moving along the route he had taken into the maze.

He had been inside the great green structure and genius monument to the mind for about twenty minutes, but already he was getting a little tired and that was never good when on the run from the cops—or worse, the Batman—after an Arkham break-out among the Rogues.

A mild glow, light milkweed churns and whitens in the sunlight in the brightest, most tempered days of the chilling spring and angry summer. He needn't have been discouraged, however that he was, as he finally saw the tiny little lights that lit up part of the maze that housed hundreds of little commemorative inscriptions and such for the clever or the bored that walked along while trying to find the actual center of the maze that just held a lot of flowers—Sweet Briar, Traveler's Joy, Vervain, Yellow Carnation, stinging Nettle—to admire before trying to find the way out in the opposite direction they had come. It always took even Edward a good couple of hours to find the way, despite this being his favorite spot in the entire park mostly populated by shrieking children, joggers, dog walkers and people who thought the place was a romantic setting for a date.

"…And then the crow takes up the boat to make a beak, Fish skins in its craw will make a wonderful stomach…"

The stiffening of skin and bone and lean muscle. The Prince of Puzzles paused at the arch of the entrance into his favorite place, the chipper voice that spoke into the air a set of nonsensical words in what could have been a sort of poem making his stomach knot and twine like snakes in a bag. He kept his hand up to his chest, the sting of it enough of an annoyance to prevent him from being really afraid. Though, he had no reason to fear; the voice inside the enclosure was feminine and so like that of a teenager that even if the person—girl/woman—recognized him, the chances were that they would run off in a fright and get lost towards the center of the labyrinth.

What a cleverly, delicious thought. A smile lit his pale features in that similar to young Scarecrow—still back in the Asylum, poor thing, and with none of the other Rogues for company after the successful break-out on the other side of the place, but Joker in his padded single cell—and, bracing the prickly leaves and sway of the hedges just for a moment, Edward bounded out to face the other person in the enclosure; hopefully their scream would not be too loud as they quivered and bounded off on recognizing the Arkham jumpsuit he stood in.

Glinting blue eyes and absolute amusement. Edward found himself bounding hap-hazardly into the sight of what appeared, in the dark, to his tired eyes, a blonde nymphet in colored jumpsuit similar to his own, twin dainty feet without shoes he himself had with bits and chunks of gravel and mud staining her skin, making them appear bruised and red.

If the universe despised him so much, send the Batman, do not send this little trouble maker who gave him migraines back at Arkham! The Riddler without his garb, without the cover of arrogance, looked upon Harley Quinn, sitting on one of the tiny benches decorated around the maze, trying to look less bashful than she actually was while looking upon the taller, more subtle being. She held one of her tiny feet in her hand, droplets of three red splatters on her palms and a few slivers of reddened wood sat beside her rear in a neat little pile that Edward would have scoffed at, had his tongue not slithered further down his throat to silence him and make him just gawk at her like an idiot he was not at all.

"Heya, Eddie!"

"…Oh, dear me," Edward finally ground out once her voice—a nerve-wracking, awful thing; he couldn't understand how anyone could stand it—punctuated the air and, by degrees, his mind, "What are you doing here, Quinn? Shouldn't you have run off in the direction of the dead carnival grounds, the Laughter Factory, or wherever Joker is taking sparse hiding places these days? This is my general peaceful place."

Another bloody wood joined the pile, as well as a flinch that dies around the backbone, center at the spot where damage can most be inflicted on a spine. Harley shrugged nonchalantly, removing a painful splinter from her foot arch that was going to cause limping, if she recalled the last time she had taken an injury to that area correctly in the catacombs of her mind.

"I like it here, and Mistah J got left behind. Don't know where he hangs his hat now and besides, it's not like I really knew this was your territory. I just thought it was a good place to lay low from the coppers. Once they're gone, so am I. So cool your jets, silly-head and relax. I don't bite."

Withering position of power. Edward crossed his arms and gave an undignified sigh—not a huffy pout. He'd have to admit that the clown was right. He could tolerate her until the heat died and, well, he was a little curious at her being without shoes. And what she had been reading before he'd come into her sights.

Spin around, spin around, knock about words. The tall—very tall in concert with common-place Harley on a bench—looked over to the plaque the blonde must have been reading, walking within a couple feet of her prone form still digging around in her own flesh for more stinging stickers. His mild shadow fell over it, but he could still read the words; not many of them that made much sense. There was the title, which read "Kraka" and then a lot of gibberish about crows and sea fairing and organs, some words in Celtic, Gaelic, Scots.

"You were reading this before I came here?" Edward questioned mildly, head not in the need to move toward her as he could catch her along the rim of his eyes.

"I was bored. I know the song, though, so that's kind of cheating. If I didn't listen to the actual music, I wouldn't have a clue about it. It thought you said you came here a lot?"

"I do," he alluded the fact that he rarely came near the benched areas that were famous for being private enough to the general public for more lascivious activities, "I just find no use for the plaques with writings like this. If it makes absolutely no sense, than what is the point but to gain headaches? Nothing."

Lacy may grin that reminds and remembers the famous cat of stripes and disappearing and Lewis Carrol. Harley smirked a little in a way that annoyed him, but had finally stopped prying objects from her feet, of which he was grateful enough to not snap at her insolence of character like he would Joker or even Penguin, "Knowledge is knowledge. What's a little pain when it earns you a prize?"

"I don't take pain to mean I'm getting somewhere, unlike some people," he jibed pointedly at her, though she seemed to let the darker octave of his point run through her like air and just sloughed it off, crossing her legs like one does in yoga, before she raised her arms, stretching to the limit of her ability and he could hear joints pop.

"Guess that you prefer plaques like the ones over there," she pointed with a fairly gnawed fingernail over at a plaque with baby blue buttons growing around it, "All about riddles, even if they're more like nursery rhymes than anything else."

Her voice was giving him such a headache, but he persevered, walking over to the mentioned and motioned after plaque, reading it aloud, if only to disprove the nursery rhyme remark. Perhaps not, but just maybe.

"_I walk upon the bonny sea, I float upon the shore. I dissolve in color and nothingness, I mean little more."_

"See," she snarked, flicking a sliver his way and it landed in a way considered perhaps precious on his sleeve, "Nursery rhymes."

'_Bitch_.'


End file.
